Big Tech looks for some global wins

Politico

5 days ago

With help from Aaron Mak
Big Tech might have lost its bid to freeze state AI rules, but on the global front, it's finding new opportunities to push back on regulation it doesn't like.
Nearly six months after President Donald Trump took office promising to go after 'unfair' overseas digital regulation, the American tech industry has already notched one victory and is pushing for more.
Canada folded first: Last week, after Trump threatened to stop trade with Ottawa, Canada agreed to shelve a digital services tax that would have collected billions of dollars from U.S. tech companies.
Now, looking to press its case in Europe, half a dozen U.S. tech trade groups signed onto a letter last week urging the White House to take a stand against 'the EU's discriminatory digital regulatory policy.'
Europe's Digital Services Act, which aims to curb harmful content online, has already come up as a topic of conversation between American and European negotiators, POLITICO's Ari Hawkins reported. European officials pushed back on reports that the Digital Markets Act, which regulates competition, is on the table, too.
No trade deal is set yet, and Trump on Monday announced the tariffs that had been set to snap back this week will once again be postponed as he negotiates deals with U.S. trading partners including Europe. But the environment is giving American tech advocates the sense that the wind is at their backs.
'It's hard for me to see the Europeans just giving it up entirely, but they're going to have to make changes' to their digital rules, said Ed Brzytwa, vice president of international trade at the Consumer Technology Association, which counts Amazon, Meta and Apple as members.
His group signed last week's letter to the White House, which named the DSA, DMA, digital services taxes, EU AI Act and the General Data Protection Regulation among 'discriminatory, unreasonable and burdensome regulations and taxes in the EU.'
American companies say they're unfairly targeted by European policies. In the latest example, Apple, which faces fines of €500 million, and Meta, which was fined €200 million, are challenging their penalties for breaching the EU's Digital Markets Act.
The trade war that Trump opened seems to have created new avenues to push their case, and now the tech industry has other digital measures in its sights.
'Canada walking back the DST was an example of how everything is on the table in these trade negotiations,' said Daniel Castro, vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonprofit whose supporters include the CTA, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Meta.
To some extent, European tech groups are joining the push to defang the digital rules coming out of Brussels.
More than 40 leaders of Europe's biggest corporations, including French AI powerhouse Mistral and the Dutch chipmaking equipment manufacturer ASML, urged Brussels in a letter last week to pause the EU AI Act for two years.
They pointed to the challenges pointed out by Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank chief, whose seminal report last September found Europe lagging in productivity. He blamed Europe's financial markets, costly energy, fragmented R&D and polarized politics.
The push against the AI Act, from both sides of the Atlantic, seemed to land with a receptive audience. European Commission tech chief Henna Virkkunen told Politico last month she would not rule out postponing some of the AI Act.
Nick Moës, executive director of The Future Society that favors tech regulation, said the push was 'emblematic of significant lobbying going on to try to water down or delete obligations and requirements imposed upon industry players developing AI.'
But other tech regulations may be harder to crack. In late June, The Wall Street Journal reported the U.S. Trade Representative's office had compiled a draft trade agreement with the EU that included a list of tentative deals with Brussels, including a dialogue on the Digital Markets Act. According to the report, American companies would be exempt from DMA enforcement while talks went on.
A senior member of the European Parliament told POLITICO's Jacob Parry the WSJ report 'is bullshit' and that 'DMA is not up for discussion.'
Brzytwa, of the CTA, said he could see policymakers in Brussels struggling to outright repeal tech regulation that had been carefully crafted over years – but the enforcement might be lightened. 'What we're hopeful for is it becomes less burdensome on companies with respect to fines,' he said.
Brzytwa said he saw the White House taking an expansive view of what might be possible on the global front. In Trump's first term, he ordered investigations into individual policies that burdened American companies. Now, however, Trump was targeting a wide range of digital policies. 'His aperture in terms of the issue set has broadened,' Brzytwa said. 'We haven't seen anything in writing but all the tea leaves seem to indicate…the issues we're citing are on the table.'
Communications systems blamed for flood disaster
As deadly floods devastate Texas, alleged failures in emergency communications infrastructure may have been a driving force of the destruction.
Over the weekend, flash floods coursed through central Texas, resulting in the deaths of at least 80 people. Dozens of people are also missing. Some local officials have accused the National Weather Service (NWS) of making faulty forecasts, which the agency has disputed. Yet, emergency preparedness experts say that gaps in the technical measures to disseminate warnings are really to blame.
'The crux of this disaster is a failure of the last mile of communication,' Tom Fahy, legislative director for the NWS employee union, told POLITICO. Such alerts were transmitted wirelessly to handheld devices, and to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Weather Radio. However, the messages can't reach people who don't have access to a cellphone or reliable service, or who've disabled such notifications on their devices.
A summer camp where 11 people are missing notably had a policy against touchscreen devices that could've received weather alerts. In addition, people may miss radio communications if they don't happen to be listening at the right moment. Other counties in Central Texas have tried to solve this problem by installing outdoor weather sirens.
post of the day
THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS
Stay in touch with the whole team: Aaron Mak ([e-mail]); Mohar Chatterjee ([e-mail]); Steve Heuser ([e-mail]); Nate Robson ([e-mail]); and Daniella Cheslow ([e-mail]).